Just who do these people think they are, anyway? They get richly rewarded in the fat times; they get richly rewarded in the lean times.

Now the times are so lean that they need a bailout from taxpayers. And what is the first thing they do? They richly reward each other.

I have a theory about this. Take the podiatrist. Does a person go to medical school and then look at smelly feet all day to save the world one foot at a time, or because he wants to be the Albert Schweitzer of Podiatry and win the Nobel Prize for Bunion Research? No, he does it because it's a living. If he can do some good while he's making that living, then he can go home at night feeling like he's worth something.

Financial types, on the other hand, do not benefit from this spiritual remuneration. If your living is to make money, nothing more, nothing less, then the only sin is in not making as much of it as you possibly can. Who cares if somebody else gets screwed, or if the money comes from the taxpayers? It's green, and it pays the mortgage on that mcmansion in Greenwich, Conn.

This is where Obama has it all wrong, trying to shame Wall Street. They do not know shame. Shame is raking in less than the guy in the cubicle next to you. The only answer is to cut off the nutrition stream. Starve the beast. Regulate everything, and then double- and triple-check the regulations, because like cockroaches, the financial types will find a way to slip through the cracks.